This page shows information on the music to be performed at the next and subsequent concerts and choir news past, present and future.
You can discover how to contact, and who are, your section representatives and members of the ECS committee on the Reps & Officers' page
You can find the ECS diary showing the programme of rehearsals and events scheduled for this term and, as far as is planned in the future in the Members' Diary
Click for the latest news bulletin circulated to members
or the previous one can be found here.
(Current member and don't receive the bulletin? Contact
ITEM 1
....... Upcoming concerts with known programming giving details on works, scores, rehearsal files etc....
Programme for the 2024/2025 Season
Thursday 17th October 2024 - Come & Sing concert
Coleridge-Taylor: Hiawatha's Wedding Feast
(midi rehearsal file from John Fletcher Music)
Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast glossary on the characters and terminology
score information: For anyone wishing to buy a score, Terry recommends the Petrucci Library Press edition available from Amazon and is a convenient A4 size.
Other printings are acceptable. Since the original is out of copyright, they are nearly all straight facsimiles with new covers.
Saturday 14th December 2025 - The Christmas Concert Concert
Benjamin Britten: Saint Nicolas
(midi rehearsal file from CyberBass)
Saturday 5th April 2025 - The Easter Concert
Maurice Duruflé: Requiem Op. 9
(midi rehearsal file from CyberBass)
Esther Bersweden: Time and Tides: An Exploration of Greenwich"
New work commissioned by ECS - score information to follow
Sibelius MP3 rehearsal tracks available from Esther. Click X to download as required.
Full | Sop | Alto | tenor | bass | |
1 Time | X | X | X | X | X |
2 The Lady Oriana | X | X | X | X | X |
3 A Drop of Nelson_s Blood | X | X | X | X | X |
4 One Tree Hill | X | X | X | X | X |
5 When I Heard the Learn_d Astronomer | X | X | X | X | X |
6 Even Such is Time | X | X | X | X | X |
Discount for ECS members at ChoraLine
20% Discount for singers Eltham Choral Society
If you order ‘EasyPlay’ via the ChoraLine website you will receive an email with a blue link to click and use on your PC/Laptop and the rehearsal recording will also upload into the ‘Purchased Music’ section in the App to use on your Tablet/Phone.
The 20% discount code is: ELTHAM
STEP 1:
Visit the ChoraLine website to select the rehearsal recording you require.
STEP 2:
Click in the circle by your voice part & then click in the circle by ‘EasyPlay’
STEP 3:
Click ‘Add to Basket’
STEP 4:
On the Shopping Basket Page type ELTHAM in the discount code box and click the green arrow to activate the code.
STEP 5:
Complete the transaction and use the recording on all your devices:
Phone & Tablet & iPad: The recording will upload into the ‘Purchased Music’ section in the App.
PC & Laptop: You will receive an email with a blue link to click to use EasyPlay. "Please click here for tips"
The ChoraLine App
We recommend the App as the best way to use ChoraLine when rehearsing at home. Please click the link below for a ‘step by step’ guide on installing the App and watch a video showing how to use all the new features in the App:
https://www.choraline.com/tips-for-the-choraline-app
ChoraLine CDs & Vocal Scores
Are sold by Presto Music (01926 886883) Please note the ELTHAM discount code does not apply for CDs & Vocal Scores.
Advice and Support
Please do email music@choraline.com if we can be of assistance and we will do our very best to help.
ITEM 2
....... Latest News for members of ECS and committee minutes ....
A. Eltham Choral Society - Summary minutes of Committee Meetings
The choir is managed by a committee elected from the membership. Committee members are also trustees of the registered charity. The present committee is membership can be found on our CHOIR OFFICERS' Page. All recent committee meetings are listed; those where the minutes have been signed off have a clickable link to the details.
• Summary Minutes of the Committee meeting held on 16th Aug 2021.
• Summary Minutes of the Committee meeting held on 28th June 2021.
• Summary Minutes of the Committee meeting held on 10th May 2021.
• Summary Minutes of the Committee meeting held on 19th April 2021.
• Summary Minutes of the Committee meeting held on 22nd February 2021.
• Summary Minutes of the Committee meeting held on 7th November 2022.
B. ECS members - Live Rehearsal ending the Summer Term 2021
30 intrepid members braved the showers for a final summer fling (sing) in Jill's Garden...and what a great afternoon it was.
Click on the thumbnail for photos!
C. Eltham Choral Society Concert at Holy Trinity Church - Saturday 30th March 2018
Here are a few thoughts from Max on the Easter Concert .............
Thank you all for last night. I thought the Insanae and the Mozart Missa Brevis were particularly splendid - the Mozart bright, lively, beautiful with good dynamic contrast. Perhaps we could have spent a little more time on the Ave Verum and the Benedictus transitions (especially the Haydn!) so I will learn from that. The string players and soloists enjoyed it very much - thank you for being so encouraging to them with words of praise - this is really meaningful to them, as they do their best to make their way in a competitive industry.
Thank you for the lovely card and for TWO renditions of Happy Birthday!
Meanwhile, I hope you have a lovely Easter, and am looking forward to working on secular choral music - Folk Songs from across the British Isles - in the summer term. This should not be construed as a pro-Brexit programme!
Max
D. Eltham Choral Society Concert Tour 2018
The tenth Eltham Choral Society concert tour to Lisbon took place from Tuesday 29th May to Friday 1st June 2018
It was a very successful and enjoyable tour with concerts at Sao Vincente de Fora, Lisbon (30th at 7pm) and Basílica dos Mártires, Lisbon (31st at 4pm)
An excursion was arranged to the Unesco World Heritage sites of the Belém Tower, the Monument to the Discoveries and the Jeronimos Monastery and many of us visited the the hilltop fortifications of Castelo de São Jorge with its spectacular views across Lisbon.
You can find a few pictures of the event in our picture gallery
E. Eltham Choral Society Concert at Southwark Cathedral - Saturday 17th March 2018
Those that braved the weather on Saturday had a most enjoyable afternoon and evening of music. Max had the following thoughts…..
Thank you all for your superb contribution to Saturday’s concert. In the afternoon you were highly engaged and alert, allowing a potentially tricky rehearsal to proceed very smoothly. The sound was even better in performance, with exquisitely beautiful singing in the Agnus Dei, impressive ensemble in the Sanctus (and the Libera recitation) great emotion and drama in the Dies Irae, and all along exceptionally committed singing. Alongside an excellent orchestra and stellar soloists, many people felt the choir stole the show. I wish you could all have heard it from where I was - I think you would have been amazed!.
Max
You can find a few pictures of the event in our picture gallery
ITEM 3
....... What the Press had to say about some of our past concerts ....
Review from the SEnine Click for Full Report
Review from the The Kentish Times, July 6th 2001
Choral society works wonders.
Amateur and professional community-based choirs around the country add a great deal to our cultural and social heritage. But for many the problem of finding enough singers to maintain an acceptable balance between the male and female voices is a constant battle. I could only wonder how Eltham Choral Society still manages to perform demanding works with such professionalism and beautifully rich sounds and harmonies when I heard its recent concert at Holy Trinity Church.
For 25 years the choir was conducted by Miriam Coe and her influence was remarkable. Now a new conductor has been appointed: Nicholas Jenkins has an excellent musical pedigree and is a fluent, expressive conductor.
The main work of the evening was Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, a theatrical, musically inventive, and a darkly passionate musical evocation of 13th Century secular poems. Untouched by religious overtones, they can be simply described as a celebration of ribald encounters with wine, women and song. Very difficult to conduct and sing, this was an outstanding performance. Disciplined throughout, the choir handled the work with passion and great drama. The conductor kept supreme control, the percussion excelled and the soloists, Rebecca Bottone (soprano), Mark Milhofer (tenor) and Mark Chaundy (baritone) sang with great professionalism. Mark Milhofer's handling of the strange mixture of tenor and alto pitches in his own very short solo section was a triumph of expressive creativity.The musical accompaniment was provided by pianists Tony Baldwin and David Battersby and a five-strong percussion section.
The concert opened with Bach's popular Brandenburg Concerto No.2. Without any real reflection on the pianists, the arrangement made a travesty of the work. However, the piano accompaniment for two of Verdi's choral works was excellent and the choir particularly excelled in the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco.
Roy Atterbury
Review from the Kentish Times, 9th November 2000
A concert in the Chapel of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich attracted a near capacity audience for what was very much a celebration of local culture.
The Eltham Choral Society was joined by the Ascension Choir from Blackheath, the children's choir from St Ursula's Convent School in Greenwich and the Kidbrooke School's Choirs in a performance of Michael Tippett's oratorio A Child of Our Time. The orchestra was the Music Sinfonia of Trinity College, an institution shortly to take up residence at the Royal Naval College
While Tippett's work has sometimes been criticised for Socialist overtones, it remains a most powerful musical denouncement of racial intolerance. The negro spirituals used in the piece to underscore the torment of oppressed races are not only a highly moving element of the oratorio, they are an acknowledgement by the composer that nothing he could compose would match the simplicity and beauty of their melodies and words.
Under their conductor, Miriam Coe, (musical director of the Eltham Choral Society), the choir gave a performance that fully captured the complex mixture of hatred, passion and disquiet that is inherent in the oratorio.
The soloists, Mary Seers, Patricia Williams and John Bowley and the impressive narrator, Brindley Sherratt, added further quality to the memorable occasion.
The concert opened with Andrew Morely conducting the two popular works by Aaron Copland. The Fanfare for the Common Man provided an ideal opportunity for the brass section of the Sinfonia to show off its skills to great effect while the orchestral ballet suite Appalachian Spring was played with warmth, colour and vitality.
The concert was supported by Greenwich Council and the New Millennium Experience Company as part of the Time to Celebrate events
Roy Atterbury
An Autumn concert visit to Felpham near Bognor was enjoyed by all who went. The following review appeared in the parish magazine:
Saturday 26th September was a damp, miserable day, but for those of us who attended the Eltham Choral Society concert in St. Mary's, the event was enough to wipe away the memories of those leaden skies.
The church provided a warm and inviting backdrop as the choir started their programme with the first half, a well balanced mixture of music and readings, old and modern, on an autumn theme. The music ranged from Handel, Mozart, Purcell and Vaughan-Williams to modern composers Maxwell-Davies, Jenkins and Taverner. The readings from Keats and Betjeman were well chosen and complemented the music perfectly.
The second half consisted of a hastily rehearsed recital of Faure's Requiem as the original programme included Vivaldi's Gloria which is due to be performed next month by our own choirs. Unphased by this, the Society showed their professionalism and talent by delivering a stunning performance of the piece that on its first hearing had been thought to be "too lively" for a requiem.
Shelagh Eastwood whose clarity and range filled the vaulted ceilings and lifted the spirits, performed the soprano solo, Pie Jesu. The organist, Tony Baldwin, showed us new heights with his accomplished playing, never masking the singing, only complementing it.
Miriam Coe, the musical director, joined the Society 23 years ago to escape the tribulations of 2-year-old toddlers. As she led us through the programme, her enthusiasm and vitality focused the eyes and ears of both choir and audience,
Comments following the performance were full of praise. Hopefully we will be able to arrange a return visit so those who missed this stunning evening can have a second chance to enjoy the Eltham Choral Society.
Robert Baker
Review from the The Kentish Times, April 9th 1998
Society May Have Hit the Ton
Last Saturday the Eltham Choral society's 90th Anniversary Concert at Holy Trinity Church was not quite the occasion I expected.
It was certainly the 90th anniversary of the Society's first performance of Haydn's the Creation which took place at the same church in Southend Crescent, on April 27, 1908. However, a subsequent review of the concert in the Times of the day made it clear the choir was already well established in the community. Indeed, an earlier report refers to the ECS performing at Eynsford in 1907. In the absence of any other historical records, therefore, this latest event could well have been a celebration of the choir's 100th anniversary which would have given the event greater importance. There is obviously no way of comparing the quality of the 1908 and 1998 ensembles but there is no doubt that the present choir is of an exceptional standard and, with almost 70 singers, it brought great passion and a supremely delicate lyricism to Haydn's work.
Delicate
The musical director of the ECS is Miriam Coe who conducts without a baton but uses restrained yet commandingly delicate hand movements to coax some inspired reactions from both the choir and the orchestra. The rising phrase in the last section of the second part was an object lesson in choral discipline as well as purity of sound. The 35-strong orchestra was bolstered by a fine organist in Tony Baldwin who is also assistant musical director of the choir. He not only provided a further depth to the orchestral playing but never once allowed his potentially powerful instrument to conflict with the perfect balance that was maintained overall.
In Susan Hendrie (soprano), Alan Jolly (tenor) and Paul Keohane (bass baritone), the society had brought together singers with great expressive skills who blended perfectly in the duets and trios. I was fascinated by Alan Jolly's tenor voice that had a gentleness and expression which had an odd affinity to the pure alto - but clearly in effect rather than pitch.
Haydn's work is not only great choral music, it is also fascinating in the way it heralds a new area of music. Written when the composer was at his zenith at 61, there are times when the brilliance of Mozart and the romanticism of Brahms, Beethoven and others are reflected in an orchestral approach which then slips almost into a near chamber mode. Seventeenth and 18th century music all seem to come together and the interpretative skills brought to this fascinating range of contrasts by all concerned made the concert an event to remember.
Roy Atterbury
ITEM 4
....... News of events and activities from other choirs and organisations of interest to members ....
Item - EXPIRES: Saturday, 30th March 2024,
Eltham Parish Church (St John the Baptist)
Eltham High Street, London SE9 1DH
Good Friday, 29th March 2024, 7.30pm
St Cecilia Festival Chorus and soloists
Sir John Stainer: The Cruxifiction
Conductor: Jack Day
Organ: Paul Plummer
Tenor: Jonathon Cooke
Bass: Grant Doyle
Entrance: Free. Retiring collection for Demelza Hospice Care for children
Rehearsals for singers on Tuesday evenings in St. John’s starting at 8pm from 27th February
reminder: the church doesn’t currently have any heating, so please rug up
Nothing further to report. - Know of an upcoming event which might be of interest to ECS members? - contact with the details